Sputnik Mania! Documentaries, old footage, and copyright

When a renowned indie documentarian went to make a film on Sputnik, he spent …

The Sputnik 1 (PS-1) satellite is shown here on a rigging truck in the assembly shop in the fall of 1957 as a technician puts finishing touches on it. (Courtesy of NASA)

When independent filmmaker David Hoffman set out to make a documentary on the Sputnik hysteria that swept the US in the 1950s, he styled the piece as an hour-and-a-half feature film. He relied heavily on old news clips from the time, none of which were provided by the networks themselves (most didn't even know what they had). Hoffman spent months tracking down bits of footage from collectors on eBay and from uploaders on YouTube. Whenever he made contact with someone who had posted one clip, Hoffman asked them what else they had.

When he was done, he took all this material back to the networks—who promptly billed him the per-minute feature film rate for reusing their copyrighted material. The fact that Hoffman was making an independently financed documentary and not a traditional feature film was irrelevant, and the total bill for clearing rights came to $320,000.

In the press package accompanying the film's release in 2008, Hoffman discussed his "new documentary style" that "embraces the timeless feel of black-and-white footage while staying true to the soundtrack of that era"—few talking heads here, just lots of original footage.

But Hoffman felt like the rightsholders charged outrageous amounts of money for their old news clips, especially after he had located them all. "The real challenge however was diligently tracking the footage from middle European and Russian underground sources," he wrote. "Once that was underway, we then had to secure the rights by contacting quite a few people—eventually paying through the nose!"

The money came from Hoffman's investor, a person who put up the entire $650,000 needed to produce the project. The film, called Sputnik Mania, opened at the IFC Film Center in New York on March 14, 2008 and was eventually shown on a few more screens around the country, but Hoffman admits that he "lost my shirt" on the project.

In the end, the film was picked up by The History Channel for $200,000—less than Hoffman had paid just to secure the rights to his footage.

Speaking at the OnCopyright 2010 conference in New York last week, Hoffman used the story of Sputnik Mania to illustrate the ways that lengthy copyright terms and high prices combine to make America's cultural history difficult to access without serious cash. Hoffman has made documentaries for 40 years, and he's quite willing to pay for footage, but his decision to make Sputnik Mania as a feature film hit him with more expensive per-minute fees, and negotiations were not an option.

"It is largely impossible to deal with the systems unless the systems open up to the independent filmmaker," he concluded.

Hoffman's not currently making films. At the moment, he's on YouTube, drumming up niche audiences and doing consulting for companies like Verizon and GE.

A difficult problem

David Hoffman

Issues surrounding copyright, fair use, licensing fees, and documentaries have been big news in documentary circles for at least a decade now. Documentaries often don't have buckets of cash to license perpetual rights, rights which grow ever-more expensive, and the result can be situations like the famous PBS series Eyes on the Prize. The civil rights documentary series was made on the cheap and it aired in 1987, but ten years later was unavailable in any form; the original footage and music had been licensed on five-year basis and the filmmakers could not afford to renew the rights. (The series may finally be available to consumers on DVD this year after the filmmakers encouraged and then discouraged BitTorrent use, finally opting instead to raise more money to relicense all the clips.)

In January, Law professor Lawrence Lessig penned a lengthy essay on documentaries and licensing for The New Republic. How did he want to deal with this issue and related issues involving copyright, fair use, and licensing?

"I have no clear view," he concluded. "I only know that the two extremes that are before us would, each of them, if operating alone, be awful for our culture. The one extreme, pushed by copyright abolitionists, that forces free access on every form of culture, would shrink the range and the diversity of culture. I am against abolitionism. And I see no reason to support the other extreme either—pushed by the content industry—that seeks to license every single use of culture, in whatever context. That extreme would radically shrink access to our past.

"Instead we need an approach that recognizes the errors in both extremes, and that crafts the balance that any culture needs: incentives to support a diverse range of creativity, with an assurance that the creativity inspired remains for generations to access and understand. This may be too much to ask."

Part of the issue here is that many such uses of old clips in documentaries might turn out to be fair use—but defining fair use remains difficult, and no one wants to be dogged by uncertainty years into a project. Licensing is more secure, if far more expensive. The Center for Social Media at American University, working with people in the field, has put together a helpful guide to fair use "best practices" in documentaries that makes clear what current norms are surrounding the use of copyrighted material in such films.

While licensing rights may be a legal and financial nightmare for those who want to reuse old bits of culture, worse things do happen. David Hoffman reminds us of that fact in a 2008 speech he made to the famed TED conference in California—a mere nine days after a fire had destroyed his personal archive, his original film prints, his papers, his camera, and his memorabilia.

33 Reader Comments

Hoffman's story is one I hear quite a bit when I talk with documentary filmmakers. Obviously those working with historical materials are the hardest hit -- and it doesn't help that archives and museums (also hit by shrinking budgets) have found new ways to "commoditize" their inventories. I.e., a lot of usage and rights fees are cropping up everywhere. But even ethnographic filmmakers are getting hit: folk songs that have been recorded by someone famous are often surprisingly the target of usage fees when someone plays them on screen.

As bad as the mechanical model from music is, it may be the nearest to a working solution. One can almost imagine a fee structure that was either flexible or arbitrarily low so as to encourage re-use of materials.

I will never, ever, understand the hoarding mentality of a number of content "rights holders" -- what a term! -- who would rather sit on their materials because they want too much than see those materials used/re-used for less than that amount. (If they are worried about a flood of requests because they charging so little, they can always fall back upon the old economic saw of supply and demand and charge more later.)

Nate ... you should also note that Stanford has in fact formed a clearinghouse for documentary filmmakers.

And, would someone please fix the freaking site log-in. I'm tired of Ars forgetting. After a decade of being here and being a paying subscriber for a while, it'd be nice not to be forgotten so regularly.

This documentary seems to be a bad example to make the case that old clips should be cheaper to use in documentaries. The documentary Hoffman made consisted of, as the article describes "few talking heads here, just lots of original footage". Take anything in large amounts and will be expensive, regardless of the price. Imagine, for example, that somebody wanted to create a piece of art that consisted of covering an entire football field with buttons. If the artist complained that the cost was too much, would anyone agree that the price of buttons should be less? I don't know if footage should be cheaper for documentary purposes, but trying to purchase a lot of anything will be expensive.

Admittedly I haven't read Lessig's entire article but if he expects the content owners, aka big media, to do this willingly then he's starting to lose his sanity. Especially considering how ridiculously tightfisted and stupidly overbearing the laws and enforcement is now.

I think content users would be more than happy to have sane restrictions and a more standardized pricing scheme for different types of content (taking into account medium, quality, etc...) but it's big business that doesn't even want to come to the table, they'd rather not even have to deal with this.

Unfortunately thanks to Disney and a few other major media conglomerates and their lobbying goons Congress and the White House couldn't give a crap about fair use and consumer rights. Case in point the recent MPAA/RIAA lobbying of Obama to protect them from the big bad boogeyman that is an obsolete business model.

What the copyright industry needs is more order. Why don't they set up a system where copyright holders can pay to have their copyrighted works stored and cataloged (by themselves if they so choose). The catalog company can then charge the fees as stipulated by the rights holder or make the catalog available to another party that handles all the financial transactions. It would do nothing to solve issues with cost or term length, but it would be a start to bringing order to the industry. And if these big rights holders want more control of their "IP" and longer term lengths, it should be a requirement to have a catalog to maintain those rights.

The fact that he had to hunt down this material himself because the rights holders had no idea what they had or where it was is ridiculous. If a rights holder can't be bothered to keep their catalog up to date what right do they have to continue charging whatever they choose for it. Do they even know if they are the actual rights holders anymore? I doubt it.

C'mon guys! The Sputnik was launched by COMMUNISTS!!! (To each according to his needs, From each according to his abilities!) Now, more than 50 years after its launch, what copy-rights are the CAPITALISTS trying to divide?

Part of the issue here is that many such uses of old clips in documentaries might turn out to be fair use—but defining fair use remains difficult, and no one wants to be dogged by uncertainty years into a project. Licensing is more secure, if far more expensive.

How secure is licensing something from someone who doesn't have the right to license it in the first place! As far as I am concern if he got a license from anybody that was not connected to the actual building, launch and filming of the Sputnik he got taken for a ride and most of these people are in what was once the USSR. Even then are these old film still covered under copyright, has the copyrights been constantly enforced? Complaining about copyright fees when you don't even know if the object is even covered by copyright or who the copyright holders are is asinine.

The Documentary Film Program at the Stanford Fair Use Project (http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/fair-use-project) helps documentary filmmakers trying to make fair uses of certain footage to potentially obtain insurance for their film (through a third party). It is not a clearinghouse, but the film is reviewed by attorneys and completing a successful review frequently allows the films to be distributed with the insurance company taking the risk.

If a rights holder can't be bothered to keep their catalog up to date what right do they have to continue charging whatever they choose for it. Do they even know if they are the actual rights holders anymore? I doubt it.

As things are now, even if the rights holders do not know, if they find out at some future date they could sue for big money. Actually, that scenario isn't too far from what happened to Bell Labs (AT&T) UNIX, and why linux was brought into existence.My fantasy is that there would be an well-financed institution that would fight for, and promote to the public, works that fall into the public domain. Something like Gutenberg and/or Dover Publications with a gazillion dollars. They could publish school textbooks and educational multimedia and actually get hard copies to schools and libraries. Meh. Not likely.

As I drool about it in the above link after 5 years of not meeting sales quota the IP is broken up to protect specific facets of the IP like literature,illustration,graphic novel/comic,Short video(TV/Web eps/games),Long video(film/games),Audio. If one facet meets the 5 year quota then only that selling facet is protected from questionable distribution/fair use claims after another 5 years and meeting a new set of quotas if a IP dose not sell it has no ability to protect itself from any fair use claim or questionable distribution.

The copy right itself can last up to 219 years but full protection under the law ends after 10, they either have to keep the public interested in it or sell it off.

Now there are 2 or 3 ways to get out of the "10 year slump" one sell enough to meet the 5 or 10 year quota....or what I really want force the IP into temporary public domain status let the quasi free market sell it to meet the 5-10 year quota then however has the highest sells have earned the right to the copy rights and pay out 10% of their profit to the last IP owner.

I feel 14-20 years is appropriate for societal good. 20 Years being good enough for use distribution and to make back the money that a project has. After that is common property, one can charge a repository fee, but not for the material itself.

Here is my documentary story for you.And here is the link where you can watch this for free and download DVD Master Quality.http://www.bigmeathammer.com/aushwitz.htmNow onto my story.My father's side came from the Carpathian Mountains and from Northern Romania.We are jewish and around 85% of the family died in Auschwitz.I decided because there were no documentaries on Jews who had come from this region I would make one for the family and for free.I spent over 3 years doing my research and then I spent another few years making a documentary.I found tons of images and things to use like film clips and maps and photos.I did get a lot of stuff use for free.I even wrote to Hungary and received hours of World War 2 newsreels for free use.My documentary was meant to be free and for those to learn.The Simon Weisenthal center was really nice and they supplied me with some film clips and images for free.But on the oither hand two organizations really pissed off me and more so my father.One was the National Holocaust Museum in Washington who charged me around $1500 to use maybe 20 photos and this after all the money that my family donated to help build and run the museum.I had told them I was making this for my family and it was a non-profit never to be sold for money ina ny way project that needed to be done.Over 400,000 people were killed from that region and their story needed to be told.The other organization was a real pisser.The Jewish Film Institute who tried to charge me $1000's of dollars per second of footage used for this film::::Jewish Farmers In Carpathia 1935 one 16mm reel shot in 'Carpathia and this was actually shot in the next village from my father's village and they would not allow me to use this.The only film in existance which showed me what it looked like in a village there.In the end I took a SVHS tape and used the damn footage anyways and they can sue me for all I care.The bottom line for me is I have a big hate for these greedbag corporate companies.To bad they don't get what they deserve.

This documentary seems to be a bad example to make the case that old clips should be cheaper to use in documentaries. The documentary Hoffman made consisted of, as the article describes "few talking heads here, just lots of original footage". Take anything in large amounts and will be expensive, regardless of the price. Imagine, for example, that somebody wanted to create a piece of art that consisted of covering an entire football field with buttons. If the artist complained that the cost was too much, would anyone agree that the price of buttons should be less? I don't know if footage should be cheaper for documentary purposes, but trying to purchase a lot of anything will be expensive.

physical analogies are always a problem, but i will try with this one: the situation would be like button makers have tons of buttons in boxes in storage. old buttons that aren't used anymore. many of the current workers weren't even aware of them. the button makers give the boxes to this artists. the artist uses them to cover a football field. then the button makes say, "oh football field covering.. yeah, we charge more for that." then charge the fee.

physical analogies are always a problem, but i will try with this one:the situation would be like button makers have tons of buttons in boxes in storage. old buttons that aren't used anymore. many of the current workers weren't even aware of them. the button makers give the boxes to this artists. the artist uses them to cover a football field. then the button makes say, "oh football field covering.. yeah, we charge more for that." then charge the fee.

To take it even further, it is more like he searched out all the buttons on his own, looking in garbage cans and car seats, and then after covering the football field with his self-obtained buttons, the original button manufacturer suddenly demands money for them, even though they were made 60 years ago.

If he didn't think the price worth paying, he shouldn't have paid it, he should have gone without the material. If it was impossible for his project to work without someone else's material, then it's reasonable for him to pay for that material.

If he didn't think the price worth paying, he shouldn't have paid it, he should have gone without the material. If it was impossible for his project to work without someone else's material, then it's reasonable for him to pay for that material.

Alternatively, he could have not bothered to ask for rights at all, since the networks wouldn't have recognised their own material and would have had a lot of difficulty proving it was theirs in court.

If he didn't think the price worth paying, he shouldn't have paid it, he should have gone without the material. If it was impossible for his project to work without someone else's material, then it's reasonable for him to pay for that material.

Anything else is down to his negotiating skills.

And you think that this is a good thing, I take it. Do you think that people who disagree about this being a good thing are insane or just stupid?

[edit: just so it's clear when this thread turns into a flame-fest, I'm a person who disagrees that the situation clank75 speaks of is a good thing, without qualification. I also disagree that copyright holders own the materials in question, but that's a philosophical argument that's pretty tired by now.]

I wonder how Hoffman would feel if he couldn't sell his documentary at all because anyone who wanted to watch it could just download it off a P2P network for free and without commercials.

Maybe next time, he could make an animation to illustrate his work.

Quite funny to see all the anti-IP articles on Ars after that whole ad-blocking article went mad with comments.

It's just as funny to see you ignore facts and repeat your tired old fantasies about how in a world without exactly the same copyright protections we now have, nobody would produce anything because it would be instantly stolen by hordes of people.

Copyright laws and their protections demonstrably don't prevent people from making free use of many methods of violating those copyrights. Works are still created and sold. Works were created and sold with copyright regimes far more lax than the current one. And you repeatedly trot out the same bogeyman of the world without new works whenever anyone talks about the current copyright regime being less than perfect.

As for suggesting that the guy do animations, well it's not much of a documentary if it doesn't involve any, you know, documents.

Not to mention it seems like, on top of the licensing fees, this guy was hung with the expense of having hunted down all this footage for himself. You'd think the license holders could have at least cut him a break for finding footage that they'd completely lost.

I wonder how Hoffman would feel if he couldn't sell his documentary at all because anyone who wanted to watch it could just download it off a P2P network for free and without commercials.

Maybe next time, he could make an animation to illustrate his work.

Quite funny to see all the anti-IP articles on Ars after that whole ad-blocking article went mad with comments.

It's just as funny to see you ignore facts and repeat your tired old fantasies about how in a world without exactly the same copyright protections we now have, nobody would produce anything because it would be instantly stolen by hordes of people.

Copyright laws and their protections demonstrably don't prevent people from making free use of many methods of violating those copyrights. Works are still created and sold. Works were created and sold with copyright regimes far more lax than the current one. And you repeatedly trot out the same bogeyman of the world without new works whenever anyone talks about the current copyright regime being less than perfect.

As for suggesting that the guy do animations, well it's not much of a documentary if it doesn't involve any, you know, documents.

Your problem is that you don't understand the basic argument that compensation, aka money, helps provide incentive to those who create. Those who do go to the time and energy, not to mention expense, of putting together things such as this documentary, do so for two basic reasons: 1) the desire to create, 2) compensation. Why would some dead head pirate be allowed to compete with the people who invest, create, and research? That's the business model I keep hearing: compete with free. If you can't, then your business model is bad. You are short sighted. You have no clue the real ramifications. I've spelled them out for the likes of you, but the lure of 'free,' even if that means stealing (and it's often refuted by people who cannot understand abstractions).

Here at Ars, the likes of Nate seem to promote the idea that copyright is bad, but then there's a turnaround that says blocking ads harms their revenue streams. They imply that such ideas as the three strikes law in Europe and ACTA are extreme reactions to something that cannot be stopped. Ars is on the road to blocking certain types of readership who don't accept ads. It's hypocritical.

I wonder how Hoffman would feel if he couldn't sell his documentary at all because anyone who wanted to watch it could just download it off a P2P network for free and without commercials.

Maybe next time, he could make an animation to illustrate his work.

Quite funny to see all the anti-IP articles on Ars after that whole ad-blocking article went mad with comments.

It's just as funny to see you ignore facts and repeat your tired old fantasies about how in a world without exactly the same copyright protections we now have, nobody would produce anything because it would be instantly stolen by hordes of people.

Copyright laws and their protections demonstrably don't prevent people from making free use of many methods of violating those copyrights. Works are still created and sold. Works were created and sold with copyright regimes far more lax than the current one. And you repeatedly trot out the same bogeyman of the world without new works whenever anyone talks about the current copyright regime being less than perfect.

As for suggesting that the guy do animations, well it's not much of a documentary if it doesn't involve any, you know, documents.

Your problem is that you don't understand the basic argument that compensation, aka money, helps provide incentive to those who create. Those who do go to the time and energy, not to mention expense, of putting together things such as this documentary, do so for two basic reasons: 1) the desire to create, 2) compensation. Why would some dead head pirate be allowed to compete with the people who invest, create, and research? That's the business model I keep hearing: compete with free. If you can't, then your business model is bad. You are short sighted. You have no clue the real ramifications. I've spelled them out for the likes of you, but the lure of 'free,' even if that means stealing (and it's often refuted by people who cannot understand abstractions).

Here at Ars, the likes of Nate seem to promote the idea that copyright is bad, but then there's a turnaround that says blocking ads harms their revenue streams. They imply that such ideas as the three strikes law in Europe and ACTA are extreme reactions to something that cannot be stopped. Ars is on the road to blocking certain types of readership who don't accept ads. It's hypocritical.

And you don't indicate how lacking copyright protections, these compensations do not exist. Copyright protections are a product of the 19th century, and even then, some things only happened because of piracy; a ton of movies only survived because of piracy, a lot of art would have been considered piracy today. In fact, a ton of art still is because people are copyrighting universal, millenia old tropes. You are, as usual, making a nonsequitur. And of course, assuming that minimal copyright = no copyright.

All this talk of market forces and supply & demand has no place here. Copyright is a state-enforced monopoly. You can't go to the competitor down the road and get the same footage cheaper.

Hence, you need to regulate prices and availability. Here in the UK, the government regulates (privatised) train fares for the same reason: If you need to catch the 17:26 to Woking there's no competition to drive prices down, it's one train and the company that runs it can set the price as high as it likes. Likewise, wholesale prices for last-mile copper loops are regulated. The incumbent telco (BT, formerly state-owned) is obliged to rent last-mile copper to anyone for a standard fee. It may not be as elegant as a free, open market but there isn't going to be a free, open market anyway because you can't ensure things like low barriers of entry and low network effects.

The emphasis should shift away from creators controlling their creation and towards ensuring they get paid. There are many cases where it benefits everyone (sometimes even the copyright holders themselves) for others to use their copyrighted material in ways they would not approve of, or for a price lower than they would ask for.

- Copyright should be registered: The onus for asserting it should be on the holder. No more orphan works.

- Compulsory licensing: The government should establish rules (constantly revised, of course) that set standard prices, with reasonable structures (e.g. bulk discounts, a flat fee after a certain amount of copies) so that anyone - without the copyright holder's permission, but only after paying the copyright holder - can re-use, re-distribute, re-mix, re-whatever the material. We need to separate the market for selling copyrighted works from the markets for distributing, re-using and enriching them. Vertical integration is bad for innovation.

I wonder how Hoffman would feel if he couldn't sell his documentary at all because anyone who wanted to watch it could just download it off a P2P network for free and without commercials. Maybe next time, he could make an animation to illustrate his work.

Here is how Hoffman would feel. I made the documentary as a feature film. For the big theater. The music. The quality of the reproduction of the footage. The sound effects. All of it. It ran in a few theaters, got great reviews, and then, with no ticket paying audience to speak of, I sold it to A&E for The History Channel. I didn't want to put it on TV immediately. The second that happened, and A&E offered DVDs, it ran on the Web. For free. But the experience of seeing it on your computer at DVD resolution is just not the same. It's kind of like watching Out of Africa on your computer. Also, animation would have had no effect on the audience like watching my movie and becomingdramatically engaged with it.David Hoffman -- filmmaker - www.theHoffmancollection.com

Copyright vs. counterfeit... the internet has made the former an anachronism. We need to rethink the way in which copyright works, now that content is distributed digitally rather than on dead trees or manufactured plastic products.

To secure a copyright in the digital millennium, the holder must make it available digitally over the network. That way, people making derivative works can link directly to the portions they wish to reference or share, and everyone gets their slice of mindshare (which is gradually replacing financial remuneration).

Money should flow towards encouraging a favored artist or studio to produce more works in the future, not so much towards retroactively rewarding content published (long) in the past. Whoever managed to jury-rig the current IP-protection structure was a sick 'n' greedy sociopathic genius. :P

The repository would be great. but damn if I can't help thinking that anything regarding sputnik and it's era would be in the commons by now. WTF is going on, and why can't anyone in our government see that it's broken? I'm thinking it's time we all started writing letters and voicing our displeasure. I mean, I've been doing it for years but maybe someone else can join in?

It's just as funny to see you ignore facts and repeat your tired old fantasies about how in a world without exactly the same copyright protections we now have, nobody would produce anything because it would be instantly stolen by hordes of people.

Copyright laws and their protections demonstrably don't prevent people from making free use of many methods of violating those copyrights. Works are still created and sold. Works were created and sold with copyright regimes far more lax than the current one. And you repeatedly trot out the same bogeyman of the world without new works whenever anyone talks about the current copyright regime being less than perfect.

As for suggesting that the guy do animations, well it's not much of a documentary if it doesn't involve any, you know, documents.

Your problem is that you don't understand the basic argument that compensation, aka money, helps provide incentive to those who create. Those who do go to the time and energy, not to mention expense, of putting together things such as this documentary, do so for two basic reasons: 1) the desire to create, 2) compensation.

Surely if I didn't understand that compensation was a powerful incentive to creation, I'd be advocating that we just get rid of those copyright laws, which I've never done.

As for compensation, look at Mr. Hoffman's situation: he went to a lot of trouble to track down documents for a project. The 'owners' of those documents couldn't be bothered to know what they had, nor to help him find stuff (too expensive, you know), so he did all that work himself. Then he paid $600,000 for the licensees to use those documents, and sold that documentary for $200,000. A rational person would look at this example and be powerfully cautioned about the economic value of making historical documentaries: they're expensive to make and their return is often negative. Copyright license fees make this sort of work uneconomical, not piracy. There are other examples of similar situations; Eyes on the Prize was mentioned in this story, Sita Sings the Blues is a work of fiction which ran into the same problem.

People who deal with historical documents face significant difficulties and expenses when trying to work within the current copyright system. Ignoring these difficulties is a bad idea. Getting rid of copyright because of these difficulties is similarly a bad idea. Making changes to our copyright system so as to minimize the difficulties while still retaining the limited-term monopoly which makes it easy to profit from producing works seems to me to be a good idea, but punishing infringement more harshly won't solve the problems raised in this article, so far as I can tell. To be honest, I can't see how it would affect those problems at all.

Copyright vs. counterfeit... the internet has made the former an anachronism. We need to rethink the way in which copyright works, now that content is distributed digitally rather than on dead trees or manufactured plastic products.

To secure a copyright in the digital millennium, the holder must make it available digitally over the network. That way, people making derivative works can link directly to the portions they wish to reference or share, and everyone gets their slice of mindshare (which is gradually replacing financial remuneration).

Copyright itself doesn't strike me as an anachronism. Some of the particular protections and details of copyright law do strike me as anachronistic, but not the concept itself. I agree that we should revise our copyright system in light of our new technological capabilities, but I accept that what will actually happen is that we will revise our technological capabilities in light of our copyright regime.

For example, the requirement that a copyright holder make something available for copyright protection is plainly illegal in all countries which are signatories to the Berne Convention. Without renegotiating that convention, your idea simply will not be adopted. Since there is zero financial incentive for the large copyright-holding corporations to advocate renegotiation, and no political incentive for governments to do so, it's not going to happen.

As for mindshare gradually replacing monetary reward, it's nice to think so, but mindshare doesn't pay bills or buy bread. Until you can get a reliable correlation between the two, any shift away from monetary incentives is going to be stillborn.

I wonder how Hoffman would feel if he couldn't sell his documentary at all because anyone who wanted to watch it could just download it off a P2P network for free and without commercials.

Maybe next time, he could make an animation to illustrate his work.

Quite funny to see all the anti-IP articles on Ars after that whole ad-blocking article went mad with comments.

It's just as funny to see you ignore facts and repeat your tired old fantasies about how in a world without exactly the same copyright protections we now have, nobody would produce anything because it would be instantly stolen by hordes of people.

Copyright laws and their protections demonstrably don't prevent people from making free use of many methods of violating those copyrights. Works are still created and sold. Works were created and sold with copyright regimes far more lax than the current one. And you repeatedly trot out the same bogeyman of the world without new works whenever anyone talks about the current copyright regime being less than perfect.

As for suggesting that the guy do animations, well it's not much of a documentary if it doesn't involve any, you know, documents.

Your problem is that you don't understand the basic argument that compensation, aka money, helps provide incentive to those who create. Those who do go to the time and energy, not to mention expense, of putting together things such as this documentary, do so for two basic reasons: 1) the desire to create, 2) compensation. Why would some dead head pirate be allowed to compete with the people who invest, create, and research? That's the business model I keep hearing: compete with free. If you can't, then your business model is bad. You are short sighted. You have no clue the real ramifications. I've spelled them out for the likes of you, but the lure of 'free,' even if that means stealing (and it's often refuted by people who cannot understand abstractions).

Here at Ars, the likes of Nate seem to promote the idea that copyright is bad, but then there's a turnaround that says blocking ads harms their revenue streams. They imply that such ideas as the three strikes law in Europe and ACTA are extreme reactions to something that cannot be stopped. Ars is on the road to blocking certain types of readership who don't accept ads. It's hypocritical.

I would love to see this article in which I have suggested that copyright is "bad." (As for what copyright has to do with ad blocking, I confess to being mystified.) Our consistent position has been against what we regard as copyright overreach and inappropriate use of the legislative/legal system. I'm certainly not "pro-piracy."

Here at Ars, the likes of Nate seem to promote the idea that copyright is bad, but then there's a turnaround that says blocking ads harms their revenue streams. They imply that such ideas as the three strikes law in Europe and ACTA are extreme reactions to something that cannot be stopped. Ars is on the road to blocking certain types of readership who don't accept ads. It's hypocritical.

I would love to see this article in which I have suggested that copyright is "bad." (As for what copyright has to do with ad blocking, I confess to being mystified.) Our consistent position has been against what we regard as copyright overreach and inappropriate use of the legislative/legal system. I'm certainly not "pro-piracy."

wordsworm has made it quite clear in his copyright posts that anyone who does not agree with current copyright terms, and also advocate stronger criminal penalties for infringement, thinks that copyright is bad, and wants the entire copyright system abolished. It's precisely the same sort of 'pro-copyright' and 'anti-copyright' dichotomy pushed by ruddy, and serves (so far as I can tell) only one purpose: to prevent rational discussion of sensible reform of the copyright system.

Here is my documentary story for you.And here is the link where you can watch this for free and download DVD Master Quality.http://www.bigmeathammer.com/aushwitz.htmNow onto my story.My father's side came from the Carpathian Mountains and from Northern Romania.We are jewish and around 85% of the family died in Auschwitz.I decided because there were no documentaries on Jews who had come from this region I would make one for the family and for free.I spent over 3 years doing my research and then I spent another few years making a documentary.I found tons of images and things to use like film clips and maps and photos.I did get a lot of stuff use for free.I even wrote to Hungary and received hours of World War 2 newsreels for free use.My documentary was meant to be free and for those to learn.The Simon Weisenthal center was really nice and they supplied me with some film clips and images for free.But on the oither hand two organizations really pissed off me and more so my father.One was the National Holocaust Museum in Washington who charged me around $1500 to use maybe 20 photos and this after all the money that my family donated to help build and run the museum.I had told them I was making this for my family and it was a non-profit never to be sold for money ina ny way project that needed to be done.Over 400,000 people were killed from that region and their story needed to be told.The other organization was a real pisser.The Jewish Film Institute who tried to charge me $1000's of dollars per second of footage used for this film::::Jewish Farmers In Carpathia 1935 one 16mm reel shot in 'Carpathia and this was actually shot in the next village from my father's village and they would not allow me to use this.The only film in existance which showed me what it looked like in a village there.In the end I took a SVHS tape and used the damn footage anyways and they can sue me for all I care.The bottom line for me is I have a big hate for these greedbag corporate companies.To bad they don't get what they deserve.

Thanks. Interesting story but ... what's up with your punctuation? It's incredibly annoying to read when there aren't any spaces after the periods.